Houses at Price Warms and cools
While in certain climates these systems can do the job well, in people where heating is more essential than cooling, they often don’t provide.
In Europe, a consortium of several universities, research companies and organizations called GEOTeCH is working to create a geothermal heat pump system that is both more efficient than current technologies and cheaper so that it could be accessible to the majority of European families and decrease the continent’s reliance on fossil fuels.
The project partners have come up with a dual-source heating pump unit that utilizes the ground and the atmosphere as heating sources, using the other as either a heat source or heat sink based upon the outside temperatures and if heating or cooling is necessary. Determined by onteh climate, the machine decides which source is best and then it can function as either an air-to-water or brine-to-water (ground) heating pump. The machine provides water. In summer it does so by employing the waste heat that is condensing .
The technology is being tested in four spots around Europe. On the campus of De Montfort University Leicester that’s supposed to replicate a small household, one was installed in the united kingdom. At that place, five bore holes were drilled to at least 10 meters deep. Four of these contain heat exchangers, while the fifth includes. That data, along with that from air temperature detectors allows the machine to ascertain which source is needed for heating or cooling.
The consortium expects that with testing, this technology will have the ability to decrease the need for gas heating in homes.
